


The Town--Caitlin

by wheel_pen



Series: Lennox and Cassia [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Town (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cosmic Partners (wheel_pen), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lennox is Jem Coughlin, working class criminal in Charlestown, Boston. Cassia is Caitlin Anderson, a fresh-faced teenager just moved to town. Jem is a wild card with a violent past and a bank robbing hobby; Caitlin is a nice girl on the honor roll trying to figure out who she wants to be. Jem has a few suggestions for her. This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Town--Caitlin

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

 

Per usual Doug and Jem were having a friendly argument, a brotherly argument—in this case, about the amount of beer currently riding in the back of Doug’s truck as they drove through the streets of Charlestown. Jem thought there wasn’t enough for a proper summertime barbecue; Doug, always the more cautious one, wanted to stop short of letting the entire neighborhood get plastered on their dime.

The disagreement was predictable not just in the particulars but in the overall trend: Jem wanted to have _a lot_ , of everything, be it beer, barbecue, or fun, while Doug worried about the consequences of excess. Doug had reason to worry: he was a recovering alcoholic whose various addictions had ruined his one chance to get out of the morass of Charlestown on a pro hockey team. He knew firsthand what excess could lead to. Jem had never learned that lesson himself, but despite his faults he respected Doug’s decision and had been known to defend it, violently, against others who weren’t quite so enlightened. Which in some ways made the beer argument even more ridiculous—however much they bought, Doug would drink none and Jem would drink too much.

Logic like that had never stopped them, though.

Doug and Jem had always been like brothers, since they were little kids—Jem’s parents had taken Doug in when his mother disappeared and his father went to jail. Doug even had an on-again, off-again thing with Jem’s sister Krista, though frankly that wasn’t unique in Krista’s world. They always told each other everything, as much as they _would_ have told anyway. They weren’t Oprah, after all.

Except for one thing. One thing Jem had been keeping to himself for years. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you told other people, not if you wanted them to consider you a sane individual. Jem was used to it now, comfortable with the knowledge, able to use it to his advantage; but when he’d first started to realize the truth as a teenager, it had made him sad, because he knew it would put a wall between him and his best friend, his brother—a wall that Doug wouldn’t even realize was there.

On the other hand, Jem now knew there was someone out there he _could_ share this secret with. He just had to find her. Or wait for her to find _him_. And as they rounded a corner in a residential neighborhood that had seen better days, he began to suspect his wait was coming to an end.

“Slow down,” Jem ordered Doug, who did so automatically.

“What? Why?” Doug wanted to know. “Oh, for—are you seriously pervin’ on those girls? They’re like f-----g teenagers.”

“I like f-----g teenagers,” Jem shot back lewdly. He pulled off his sunglasses and leaned out the window of the truck. “Hi, ladies,” he called to the group of high school girls strolling down the sidewalk. They giggled among themselves, not sure how much attention to give him. “What’s your names? Come on.”

“F-----g pathetic,” Doug muttered beside him, watching for cars as they crawled along.

“Come on, you’re all good townie girls, ain’t ya?” Jem persuaded, flashing his slightly manic grin. “I bet I know your older brothers.”

“More like their _dads_ ,” Doug corrected under his breath.

Finally one of the girls, dark-eyed and bold with the shortest shorts and the tiniest tank top, threw out a name, which might not have been her own. “Natalie Darby.”

“Natalie Darby? You’re not Natalie Darby,” Jem accused good-naturedly. “Natalie Darby was a skinny little kid with braces. I know your brother Chris, he works at the garage on Seventh.”

“You know my cousin, Sam Conroy?” asked another, of a blonder variety.

“Up at the diner? F—k yeah,” Jem confirmed. “I just talked to him last week. You Hailey or Ashley?”

“I’m Hailey,” she replied.

“I’m Ashley,” admitted another. It was a small, insular neighborhood, after all.

“Well, we’re practically related,” Jem declared. “But not _too_ related. Me and Dougy here are havin’ a barbecue. Hop in the back, you’re all invited.”

“G-d, not in the back of the truck,” Doug moaned.

“Stop already,” Jem told him—the truck, and the worrying. “Come on, what else are you girls doin’ today?” he went on persuasively. “Come on, Darby, Conroy—is that Brianna Ryan back there? Come on, climb in. It’s just barbecue.”

The bold girl, who may or may not have been Natalie Darby, finally made a move towards the truck and the other girls followed like lemmings. “You’re Jem Coughlin, aren’t you?” one of them recognized, as they scrambled into the back of the truck with practiced ease. “I’m Katie Kelly.”

“Which Katie Kelly? Oh, you gotta be Deirdre’s daughter, you look just like your mom,” he decided. “Only younger.”

“And skinnier,” she added pertly.

He chuckled. “Well, _I_ wasn’t gonna f-----g say it!”

“You’re Doug MacRay, right?” asked another girl, recklessly leaning around to Doug’s window. “My uncle played hockey with you in high school. Steve Lyle.”

“Oh, yeah,” he realized. “Stinky?” She giggled. “Where’s he been? I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Walpole,” she admitted. “He’ll be out in a couple years, though.”

After the mass loading there was just one girl left, who had drifted onto the grass of the curb but seemed hesitant about fully committing. Jem didn’t mind having extra time to peruse her—she was a looker, with a heart-shaped face, full lips, and curves even her modest shorts and t-shirt couldn’t hide, much as she tried to blend in.

“Come _on_ , Caitlin!” hissed one of the other girls, clearly worried she was going to sabotage their potential for coolness.

“What’s _your_ name?” Jem asked, unabashedly looking her up and down. “I don’t think I know you.”

“She’s new, she just moved here,” someone supplied from the back, hoping this would excuse her gauche behavior.

“What’s your name?” he asked again, spearing her with his blue-green gaze.

“Caitlin,” she answered finally, and even in two syllables he could hear the familiar husky, slightly scratchy voice he knew so well. “Anderson.”

Jem had to stop himself from staring at her for too long. There would be time for that later. “Caitlin Anderson,” he repeated. “We got the Swedes comin’ in now,” he added good-naturedly. “Well hop in, new girl. You wanna ride in front?”

She shook her head quickly and made for the back. “Everyone in?” Doug called. “Sit the f—k down and stay that way!” They started rolling again, below the speed limit, the gaggle of girls thrilled to be doing something slightly illicit on their way to a grown-up event. Doug shot Jem a long-suffering look; Jem merely cackled and put his sunglasses back on. It was only a few blocks to their place anyway.

Once they’d pulled into the driveway and stopped, Jem hopped out to give as many girls as possible a hand down. He was mentally calculating the family connections, trying to decide which ones were safe to mess around with, and which ones would get him jumped by angry brothers and cousins. Not that he was _planning_ to do anything, but it was good to prepare in advance.

Well, there was _one_ he had plans for.

“Caitlin Anderson,” he said once more, lifting the girl down from the truck. His hands lingered on her waist even as she pulled back from him, staring to the side or at her shoes rather than meet his gaze. There were roles they had to play in public, when other people were watching; but he wasn’t getting the vibe that really, she recognized him. Something to investigate later, he decided, letting her pass. She hurried into the house after her friends.

“You have some kind of problem,” Doug judged, only half-serious. He loaded beer into Jem’s arms, more than a person really ought to be able to carry.

“What?” Jem squawked back in the same tone. “It’s just a barbecue. We’ll keep the crack pipes inside today.”

“Yeah, we shoulda rented one of those bouncy castles,” Doug claimed. “Since you’re inviting f-----g kids now.” Jem laughed and walked the beer around to the back.

“F-----g finally,” his sister Krista muttered, making him stand there on the lawn with his arms full while she opened the one box, in the middle, that she liked best.

“You better got that f-----g grill going,” he warned her. “I’m starvin’, I don’t wanna wait two g-----n hours to eat.”

Krista gave him the finger and sauntered off while gulping her beer. Ah, family. Jem dumped the beer on the ground near the coolers for more responsible people, or those lower on the totem pole, to put away and scooped up his two-year-old niece instead.

“Heya, Shyne,” he greeted her, surreptitiously trying to make sure she wasn’t playing with beer can tabs again. Krista enjoyed the attention of unexpected motherhood and the pleasure of accessorizing herself with the most blinged-out baby money could buy; but she was a little light on the practical details, like not letting the toddler play with choking hazards. Jem had internalized the social rules when he was young and studied them later, as an adult with greater awareness of the world; and he knew there was a limit to how involved he could get in correcting Krista about the little girl. If he didn’t like the way she was being raised, his best option was to find someone else to raise her—be it another local woman like a girlfriend, or the State. In his particular social circle there were not a lot of family men.

He put Shyne down safely in her play yard, which did not at first glance contain anything hazardous, and went to greet the rest of his guests, their crew from the neighborhood. He’d grown up with them, maybe their brothers or uncles; they shared a common heritage, way of life, simple goals. No one aspired to much here, even those who weren’t hurting for money. You put one foot in front of the other and were just glad for every day you weren’t in the hospital or at the cemetery.

Jem watched the teenage girls trickle into the backyard, keeping an eye out to make sure no one got too rowdy—while always looking like _he_ was about to get too rowdy, because discipline and responsibility were Doug’s bag, not his. The girl was especially interested in was obviously uncomfortable and out of place here—natural hair color, no make-up, no garish jewelry or name brands on her clothes, and ill at ease with a bunch of working-class types knocking back beers and making bawdy jokes around her. They’d be calling her stuck-up soon if she didn’t learn to fit in a little better—then again, she probably thought she only had to put up with this for two or three years, then she’d go off to college and never look back. At least, that’s what he imagined an ordinary girl like her would be thinking. It remained to be seen if she was still ordinary or not.

Jem maneuvered across the yard to her, plotting carefully so it looked like he had just ended up near her on accident. “The new girl, huh,” he commented, leaning against the side of the house. There was a shrub on her other side, just close enough that she’d have to be overt if she wanted to get away from him. “Where you from?”

“Um, California,” she replied with a nod.

“Oh I see,” he commented—one reason for looking so out of place was that she _was_. “Good thing you started out in the summer, huh? You’re gonna be f----n’ freezing come winter.”

“Yeah, actually I’m from northern California, away from the coast, so…” She shrugged. “It gets kinda cold sometimes.”

“Sweetheart, there ain’t nothin’ like a Boston winter,” he assured her proudly. You had to take pride in what you could around here. “What’d you move here for, anyway? Most folks are goin’ in the other direction.”

“My stepfather got a job here, so… yeah, we moved.” It had obviously not been the highlight of her life. “My dad is still in California, he has a restaurant, but—“

“You didn’t wanna stay with him?” Jem probed intrusively.

“ _He_ didn’t want me to stay with him,” she admitted, and finally looked him in the eye.

Something flashed in hers, not quite recognition, maybe familiarity or understanding, partially what he was looking for but not everything. Well, she was young yet, about the age he had been when he had really begun to think something unusual was going on, and the first thing he had learned was that just because something seemed familiar, didn’t mean you’d actually experienced it in _this_ lifetime.

He’d held her gaze for too long and she looked away uncomfortably, desperately glancing around the backyard for an excuse to get away from him. A perverse part of him—and there was a lot of perversity in him this time around—enjoyed her discomfort.

“Hey, you want a beer?” he asked, deliberately misinterpreting her expression.

“No thanks.”

“How ‘bout a root beer?” She glanced at him to see if he was teasing her. “Yeah, that’s Dougy’s favorite, you know, he’s off the sauce, so—“ She looked at him blankly. “He doesn’t drink alcohol, goes to AA meetings,” Jem clarified.

“Oh.”

“Come on, there’s some inside.” He took her hand and pulled her around the shrub to the back stairs. She put up mild resistance, which he ignored. “Come on, you’re thirsty, aren’t ya?” People were going in and out of the house regularly, and she had obviously been raised to be _nice_ and not make a fuss. Which was great for not so nice people like him. So she told herself it was okay, and she went.

He headed for the kitchen, then veered off to his bedroom at the last second. Her protest was cut off by the slamming of the door and he put her back to it, one hand on the door beside her head. He could sense the pounding of her heart, saw her eyes widen as she realized the dangerous situation she’d landed in. Good. It was dangerous situations where he’d truly learned who he was.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, his voice low.

“Caitlin,” she whispered, pressing back against the door as though trying to melt through it. Well, maybe she would.

“You have any other names?” She shook her head, not understanding what he meant. Her eyes darted around the room for help or escape. “Hey!” he snapped, to regain her focus. “No one ever calls you anything else?” He pressed closer, his body grazing hers; he could feel her trembling and it excited him. He leaned down, inhaling her spicy scent, and his lips brushed her ear. “No one ever calls you… Cassia?”

She froze against him and he knew she’d recognized it. “I had a dream,” she finally admitted, her voice shaking, “where someone called me that.”

“Someone?” he repeated, with dry amusement. Who else would it have been but him? “Are you sure it was just a dream?”

He leaned back just enough to stare into her eyes, endless ice blue deep enough to drown in. Her hands, which had been pressed flat against the door, now crept hesitantly up his chest, as though searching for a connection she knew was there. He slipped one hand onto her hip, possessively, pulling her closer, and dropped his head to graze her lips. “What’s my name?” he murmured. She opened her mouth as if to answer but nothing came out; he didn’t waste the opportunity but plunged in. Her hands slid over his shoulders and he jerked her leg up over his hip, trying to position her at a better height, and his other hand tangled itself in her hair. He knew her taste, her smell, the little moan she made when he squeezed her right _there_ , and it felt like it had been a lifetime since he’d held her last.

Which it had been.

But it was someone else’s lifetime.

“Jem! Hey! Hey!”

With a low growl in the back of his throat he pulled his mouth from hers, turning to glare at the open window where Doug was standing. “ _What?_ ”

“What are you doing?” Doug asked, as though he should know better.

Jem thought his objective—one of them, at least—was pretty obvious. And Doug was clearly f-----g it up. Caitlin took advantage of his distraction by pushing him back and yanking open the door, making a break for it from not only the house but probably the entire neighborhood. Jem let her go, confident they would meet again. “Caitlin,” he tried once anyway, as though she were being unreasonable. He was ignored.

“What the f—k was that?” he demanded angrily of Doug.

“What the f—k was _that_?” Doug turned on him.

“That was me about to get laid with a f-----g hot girl,” Jem snapped, prowling around the bedroom. He had energy to spare now. Doug disappeared from the window, presumably heading inside to talk to him, but Jem kept speaking, loudly. “Which _you_ wouldn’t f-----g know anything about, unless my sister’s around—“

Doug entered his bedroom and shut the door behind him. “No, that was you about to get in big f-----g trouble,” he hissed.

“F—k, man, she’s sixteen, at least.” That was the age of consent in Massachusetts—though now that he thought about it, he realized he hadn’t checked her age.

This defense did not impress Doug. “And she looked like she was having a great f-----g time, too,” he noted.

“Until you interrupted us,” Jem insisted. Doug’s implication did not offend him; in Charlestown there was rape—generally along the lines of attacking a random woman in an alley—and then there were grey areas. Naturally Jem’s grey areas were more elastic than Doug’s.

“You can’t be messin’ around with a f-----g kid you don’t even know,” Doug persisted, which got Jem’s back up. “She complains to her parents, the cops dome down on you like—“

“What is this? Are you in charge of who I f—k now?” Jem demanded. His temper was triggered easily and the rush felt good, almost as good as the rush he’d felt with Caitlin.

Doug knew him well enough to realize when he should back off and give him some space. “Man, come on, you know I’m just lookin’ out for you here,” he said in a placating tone.

Jem took a breath and rolled his neck, trying to calm down, although he really didn’t want to. “Yeah, man, I know,” he sighed. It was considered a little foolish to get worked up over what seemed to be a random lay, anyway. Jem barked out a laugh. “Just—did you see her t-ts? She had ‘em covered up pretty well, but I think they were gonna be f-----g awesome.”

Doug rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Some of Krista’s friends just showed up, maybe you can hook up with a girl you don’t need to card, alright?”

“Yeah, man,” Jem agreed, as though it were of little consequence. He knew Doug meant well, and it might possibly have been a smart thing to do under ordinary circumstances. “F—k it.” They went back outside to the party.

**

It was raining the next time he saw her. A summer storm that popped up out of nowhere to drench the city and turn people into bigger idiots than they already were, especially the pedestrians who acted like they would melt if they waited one more second on the curb. Naturally Jem was driving.

He went by the bus stop all the time and didn’t really pay much attention to who was standing there, only if they were standing still or threatening to dart in front of him. But he was primed for her presence now, and he drove on autopilot as he stared at her, soaked through in a little blue dress that had probably seemed like a good idea when the sun was blazing down.

He pulled over and rolled down the window. “Caitlin! Get in!”

He hoped she wouldn’t have done such a foolish thing for anyone else, rain or no, hoped it was because she knew they had a connection even if she didn’t understand it. She hesitated for a moment, then ran for the car, and he leaned over to push the door open for her.

Once she was inside he pulled off to some quieter side streets and blasted the heater for her. “Thanks,” she told him, shivering.

“Where you headed?” he asked, driving aimlessly.

“I was going home,” she replied. “It’s on North Randolph—“

“You don’t f-----g tell any random guy where you live, do you?” he finally asked. “Or get in their car? Not in this city.”

“Well, no,” she responded, a bit defensively. “But I know you.”

“Just ‘cause we made out for two minutes at a party doesn’t mean you know me,” he tested.

Caitlin shook her head, flinging water droplets around the car. “No, I know you from somewhere else.”

“Where? You do time at Walpole or something?” She looked at him blankly. “That’s the local prison.”

“Oh. You were in jail?” She sounded concerned, as she should.

“Yeah, me and half the neighborhood,” he exaggerated. “Why would you move to f-----g Charlestown, anyway?”

“I told you, my stepdad got a job here,” she repeated with some annoyance. “He works for National Steel and they needed a foreman at the factory.”

“What’s your mom do?” he wanted to know.

“She’s a librarian at the city library.” Caitlin’s glances at him grew longer and bolder as he pretended to focus on the road. “How did you know that name? The name I was called in a dream.”

“Cassia?” he repeated, and she shivered suddenly. He smirked. “How do you _think_ I know?”

“What’s _your_ name?” she asked.

“Jem Coughlin.”

Caitlin frowned. “Your _real_ name.”

“You tell me,” Jem challenged.

She sighed and stared out the window. “Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy,” he assured her. “Right now, it’s all jumbled up. But just wait, you’ll get it sorted out.” They could have been talking about any ordinary teen angst at this point, so he decided to up the ante a little. “One time, when I was a kid—well, your age—I dreamed I was flying. And I woke up hovering a f-----g foot above the bed.” Caitlin looked at him with wide eyes, and a tinge of understanding. “Could not figure out how to get down,” he added, shaking his head. “F-----g terrified my mom would come in and find me there. How the f—k do I explain that?”

“That happened to me,” Caitlin told him, shocked and excited at the same time. “Only I got stuck on the rafters in my bedroom—in California—and I had to get my little brother to bring a ladder.”

Jem laughed. “Bet that took a big f-----g bribe to keep him shut up.”

“What—what _are_ we?” she wanted to know. “Are we, like—“ She broke off.

“What?”

“I was going to say, like, Spider-Man or the X-Men or something, which I know is stupid,” she added as he started to scoff.

“I would totally be Wolverine,” Jem decided with glee. “Pop those f-----g claws! But?” he prompted.

“But I remember things, I remember doing things I’ve never done before,” Caitlin tried to explain. “Being places I’ve never been. Knowing people I’ve never met.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

“ _Doing_ people you’ve never met,” he added innocently, and she rolled her eyes.

“So it’s like—superhero reincarnation,” she finished with resignation.

“They _are_ rebooting a lot of superhero franchises,” Jem cracked. “No, trust me, I ain’t no f-----g hero. Well, not _this_ round.”

“That’s what I mean,” Caitlin pounced. “I don’t understand that part.”

“ _That’s_ the part you don’t understand?” Jem scoffed. “But f-----g flying makes perfect sense.”

“Why are you making fun of me?” Caitlin asked in irritation. “Are there so many of us that if you’re a jerk I could just leave and—“

Jem chuckled. “No, sweetheart, there’s just the two of us. And we gotta play our parts.”

“Our parts?”

There had been no one to explain this to Jem when he was growing up, but he didn’t begrudge her that. Maybe he could help her avoid some of the mistakes he’d made. “Yeah. I’m Jem Coughlin, working class criminal from Charlestown. I got a hair-trigger temper, excess Irish pride, and also I’m kind of a jerk,” he added with a grin. “That’s who I was born and raised to be. It’s tough to change that. Even if I can fly, and remember bein’ all heroic and s—t during, like, World War I.” He glanced over at her. “How ‘bout you? Who are you today?”

“Well, I’m Caitlin Anderson—“ She stopped, frustrated. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”

Now _that_ sounded like typical teen angst. “I know who you are,” Jem guessed. “You’re a good girl. You get straight A’s, probably in some kind of after-f-----g-school club, you don’t drink or stay out late, you most definitely do not make out with strange men at parties or get into their cars—“

“Stop!” Caitlin said with a laugh. He liked hearing her laugh, seeing her laugh, and kept his eyes on her until her expression became alarmed. “Watch the road!” she insisted.

Jem deliberately did not turn away from her and even took his hands completely off the wheel. “Sweetheart, I don’t _need_ to watch the road,” he said, as the car cruised along perfectly well. “That’s kinda the whole f-----g point.”

Caitlin slid down in the seat, feeling overwhelmed. “This is crazy,” she said again. “If I told this to anyone, they would think I was just—completely crazy.”

“Well, fortunately, you _can’t_ tell anyone,” he informed her. “Well, you _could_ , I guess, but what would be the f-----g point of the game, then?”

“No one knows?” she checked. “About you?”

“No,” he replied firmly. “Maybe there’s a weird thing here or there, but nothing you couldn’t shrug off or explain away. So don’t f-----g blow it for me by asking stupid questions in front of people, okay?”

Caitlin narrowed her eyes at him. “If I’m playing the good girl, why am I hanging around with _you_?” she asked pointedly.

“Typical teenage rebellion,” Jem cracked. “I ain’t gonna let you go, though,” he added more seriously. “So try not to be such a princess, okay, ‘cause it’ll only make me look p---y-whipped.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Caitlin confessed.

“Well I’ll show you then.” He pulled the car off the street into a grove of trees, muffling the traffic nearby.

Caitlin looked around in alarm. “Wait, where are we?”

“Carmichael Park,” Jem told her, critical of her lack of knowledge. “We’re two f-----g blocks from your house. J---s C----t, don’t you ever get out and walk around?” He killed the engine and turned to face her.

She was not cowed by his judgment. “My mom doesn’t like me to walk around the park, she says it’s dangerous. She says the whole neighborhood is dangerous.”

“Well, don’t go out at night by yourself,” Jem advised. “Or with only girls. Until you learn how to defend yourself, anyway.” He took a long moment to look her up and down, the way the damp dress clung to her body.

“Stop it,” Caitlin told him, squirming self-consciously.

“Come over here.”

“No.”

Jem cocked his head to the side curiously. “Are you the girl who plays hard to get?”

“Well, I’m not the _skank_ who just—gives it up in a _car_ in the _park_ ,” Caitlin protested.

Jem tried not to smirk. “You ever had sex before?”

“Yes,” Caitlin answered, then caught herself. “No,” she corrected, as though confused about the previous response.

This time he _did_ smirk. “It could be both,” he allowed. “In _this_ round. That body right there.”

“No,” she decided firmly.

“Good,” he grinned lewdly. “That’s my favorite.”

Caitlin shot him a look of disgust. “I don’t understand why I’m stuck with _you_ ,” she sniffed. “Like, for all eternity or something?”

Jem laughed. “You’ll find some good qualities to appreciate,” he predicted, unoffended. “Now come over here.”

“No.”

“I’ll come over there.” He started to slide over the center console and she tried to open the door. It stayed shut, though, even when she manually flipped the lock. “It’s not gonna open, sweetheart,” he assured her.

Caitlin tried to climb away from him, admirably determined given the small space she had to work with, and no enhanced abilities. But it didn’t take long to get her down on his lap, one leg on either side of his. He grabbed both of her wrists with one hand and wrapped his other arm around her waist, trying to keep her still.

“Easy, easy, sweetheart,” he told her soothingly. He kind of liked the squirming but she was suddenly scared and might hurt herself. “Hey, we were just talkin’, weren’t we? About flyin’ in our sleep and s—t. We are not ordinary f----rs like everyone else out there. So calm down.”

Caitlin tried to settle a little bit, still watching him warily. As a show of good faith he let her hands go. In a similar show of good faith she did not claw his eyes out. “Well, if we’re magically meant to be together,” she said in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “why don’t you just _wait_?”

“Jem Coughlin don’t like waiting,” he pointed out. He stared into her eyes first, trying to make her forget about the outside world, about the ordinary rules that didn’t always have to apply to them; trying to make her remember everything they meant to each other. Once he felt her relaxing a little bit he slid one hand up her back to her hair, burying his fingers in the silky strands and trying to coax her head down without force. He ran his other hand in long, slow circles over her hip and ribs.

“Come here, sweetheart, that’s right,” he encouraged in a whisper, until she was close enough that he could stretch up and capture her lips with his own. The kiss deepened and further melted her resistance; her hands slid up his chest to his shoulders and hair, and he briefly regretted having it cropped so close at the moment.

His lips trailed across her cheek to her earlobe and he grazed it with his teeth, making her gasp and dig her nails into the back of his neck. He continued down her neck to that sweet spot on her collar bone that usually made her moan and it didn’t fail him; her moans made _him_ moan, especially when she rolled her hips against his at the same time. He debated what to press for and decided on sliding his hand up her skirt, along the outside of her thigh, before sliding across the smooth skin to the interior. His fingers brushed the fabric of her panties and she tensed; he’d pushed his luck too far.

Caitlin pushed back from him, panting. “Let me out,” she told him, with shaky conviction.

His hand was still under her skirt and he pressed his fingers against her firmly, using an arm around her waist to keep her from shying away. She made a noise of pleasure, almost against her will, and he pulled her closer. “I want this,” he hissed in her ear. “Nobody else gets it. It’s mine. Understand?” He worked his fingers against her until she nodded, then abruptly pulled them away. “I’ll take you home now,” he said in a business-like way that failed to completely disguise the fire coursing through him.

Caitlin opened her eyes, looking perhaps disappointed. “Unless you want to stay here,” he offered.

For a second he thought she actually might accept. Then she withdrew, trying to remember who everyone else thought she was, a foolish teenage girl in a car with a much older man whose intentions were obviously dishonorable. “Take me home,” she requested.

Jem squirmed out from under her and back to the driver’s seat—no graceful task—and started the car up. They drove the last two blocks silently—she seemed to be obsessed with smoothing down her hair and dress, and he was seriously contemplating just driving her to the nearest rent-by-the-hour no-tell. But she deserved more than that. This time, _he_ was the one with more experience; next time, it could be the other way around. And Cassia was a b---h for payback. But it wasn’t just that, he respected her, or wanted to respect her, or knew deep down he respected her—things still got all jumbled up sometimes, even for him—and he didn’t want to press his advantage too far.

Besides, there were just the two of them.

Jem stopped at the end of her block, in case someone was watching from the house. “Next time, I’ll wait for _you_ to call _me_ ,” he promised, and let her open the door. She gave him one final, long look that could have meant many things, then dashed from the car through the rain.

**

Weeks went by, and she didn’t call. The weather turned cooler; he noted that school had started, which he didn’t normally pay much attention to. Every time he saw a city school bus go by he wondered if she was on it, or if she was too cool for that and got a ride with one of her friends.

Technically, he hadn’t given her a phone number, but that shouldn’t have been a problem. It was a small neighborhood, and she knew people who knew him. She could’ve easily found out where he was likely to be, or at least put it around that she wanted to talk to him and he would have found _her_. But that was her choice. He’d promised he would let her make the next move.

He did some jobs, hung out with his friends, played a lot of Xbox, paid attention to Shyne when there weren’t too many other people around. Krista did not curb her language around the toddler and in fact found it hilarious to hear her yelling, “F—k! F—k! F—k!” as she pounded wooden pegs with her little hammer. Jem would’ve found it funny in someone else’s kid, but not for one he actually cared about. He decided to wait until she was a little older, then wipe the words from her memory entirely.

One evening he was sitting at the bar with some friends, watching a game on TV and drinking beer—a typical and enjoyable activity for him, very much about the here and now, the shared culture of sports and razzing each other and invoking the memory of past such evenings. He felt more than heard his cell phone ring and pulled it out to see the ID displayed as ‘unknown.’ That was pretty common in his circle, with everyone using disposable ‘burner’ phones to evade wiretaps.

“What?” he answered into it brusquely, per usual.

Then he heard sniffling. “ _Jem?_ ” Caitlin’s voice.

“Hang on,” he told her urgently, spinning off the barstool and jogging outside where there was less noise. “Where are you, sweetheart?”

“ _I don’t know_ ,” she sniffed. “ _An alley, near_ —“

“Okay, I know where you are,” he assured her, short-circuiting the more traditional method to locate her instantly. She’d called him crying from an alley, and his blood was running cold. “Stay there, I’m coming to get you.”

“Jem!” he heard behind him as he hung up. Doug must’ve seen him leave so quickly and been worried, which was great of him but complicated matters somewhat. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Gimme your keys,” Jem requested. He’d been planning to travel in a faster, less easily explained manner, but obviously couldn’t with witnesses around. “Come on, lemme borrow your truck.”

Doug had the keys out but wouldn’t hand them over. “No, you been drinking too much,” he judged, much to Jem’s frustration as alcohol didn’t really affect him at all. “I’ll drive you, tell me where we’re going.”

“Edwards, between Third and Fourth,” Jem conceded, running around to the passenger side of the truck. “Thanks, man,” he added as they got going.

“No problem,” Doug assured him. “What’s goin’ on? Was that Krista?”

“No,” Jem admitted, wondering how this was going to go over. “It was Caitlin. The kid you told me to stay away from.”

Doug looked askance at him. “The kid from the party? The f-----g twelve-year-old or whatever? C----t, Jimmy.”

Jem shrugged as if to say there was nothing to be done about it now. “Well, she’s in trouble, I don’t know—“

“Trouble? What do you mean, in trouble?” Doug demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Like knocked-up in trouble?”

“I don’t f-----g know,” Jem repeated, more angrily. He was upset enough just imagining what he was going to find, he didn’t need Doug hassling him about it too. “There, that alley, pull over!”

He could just see her, a splotch of pink blending into the shadows, and he dashed across the street heedless of the traffic. She was sitting on the ground in a pink, sparkly dress, her hair done up but now messy, sobbing in her hands, and he revised all his earlier worries towards the more serious.

“Caitlin!” She looked up at him, tears streaking her face, mixed with blood from a split lip. He heard Doug swearing behind him.

Jem pulled her to her feet for a better look. She flinched and wobbled, favoring one ankle, and tried to hold the torn straps of her dress up. The picture made him white-hot with rage, almost unable to see straight.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, sweetheart,” he tried to tell her, without actually knowing if it was. Part of him wanted to hold her close, but another part was already working to keep his temper in check until he found the right person to vent it on. “It’s okay, I’m here.” Doug draped his coat around her shoulders, looking sick—over what had happened already or over what was _about_ to happen wasn’t clear.

Jem pushed her hair back and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Did he rape you?” She shook her head, which was some relief, anyway. Obviously he’d tried, though. “Okay.” He kissed her forehead. “Who did this, and where is he?”

Caitlin nodded down the alley. “In the park. A blue truck. I think I killed him!” she blurted, before dissolving into fresh tears and burying her face against Jem’s chest.

“Well if you didn’t we’re gonna f-----g finish the job,” he vowed. “Come on, let’s go back to the truck.” He scooped her up and crossed the street again, more carefully this time, and Doug jumped ahead to open the door for him. Jem set her in the cab and exchanged a look with his friend before walking around to the other side. Doug nodded in return—he knew exactly what the next step was and had no problem with it. Assault was another grey area in Charlestown—you just did not go around hitting nice girls in the face because they wouldn’t put out. But the assault _they_ were about to commit was perfectly justified.

Jem put his arm around Caitlin in the cab of the truck, mechanically holding her close while he scanned the street. There would be time for comfort later. “Where in the park?” Doug asked, driving around the block.

Jem leaned down like Caitlin had whispered something to him. “South side,” he announced, having already located the vehicle in question himself. He could barely sit still while Doug circled to the right entrance. “Okay, you stay here, sweetheart,” he told Caitlin when they stopped. “Go on, lay down. Stay down. We’ll be right back.”

She clung to his arm as he stood on the gravel and for an instant he thought he should stay, take her home, not worry about vengeance. He touched the unbruised side of her face gently. But then the fury flashed through him again and he maneuvered from her grasp. “Stay here,” he repeated, and shut the door.

They walked through the shrubbery quickly. “That’s f-----g wrong, man,” Doug whispered to him angrily.

“There’s the truck. Look at that f----r,” Jem snarled.

“Where is he?”

A teenaged boy staggered around the front of the truck, rubbing his head like he’d knocked it on something. He was no scrawny kid, more like an athlete, football player maybe. He was about to wish he’d made alternate career plans.

They came out of the bushes shouting and swearing. “Hey, f----r, this your truck? Is this your f-----g truck?” Jem came straight at him while Doug went around the truck.

The boy backed up warily. “Yeah, it’s my truck—“

“Guess this is your f-----g purse, too, huh?” Doug suggested, picking up a sparkly pink bag from the cab that matched Caitlin’s dress. “This your f-----g color, huh?”

The boy went white as a sheet, realizing what was about to happen and why, but Jem didn’t let that stop him from slugging him across the chin, knocking him down into the dirt. For Jem the pain was momentary, part of the visceral thrill of letting his anger overtake him, venting it on the pathetic, unresisting creature who would now understand his place on the bottom of the s—t heap so much more clearly.

Doug had to pull him off. That was his job. Jem could take most anyone one-on-one when he got his temper up—more than one and Doug would be in there swinging at his side. But just one, and it was Doug’s job to haul him back, calm him down, remind him that Caitlin was going to be okay and they didn’t need to kill this guy. His expression as he looked at the bloodied pulp on the ground said they wondered if they already had.

“You wanna go to the police? Go to the police!” Jem screamed at him, even from a distance as Doug guided him away. “You seen my face, just remember, I seen _yours_!”

“Come on, man, come on,” Doug encouraged, dragging him off. Jem calmed down somewhat as the truck and its driver disappeared from view. “F—k, man,” Doug commented, and then they both started chuckling as the tension broke.

“That punk is gonna s—t himself every time he even _sees_ her from now on,” Jem predicted gleefully.

“Yeah, well, if he ain’t in a coma,” Doug countered, though without _too_ much concern. The park at night was a dangerous place, after all—a mugging gone bad wasn’t exactly uncommon.

Jem waved him off. Mentally, he was going over the boy’s injuries and fixing a few of them, enough that he could crawl home and probably convince his parents not to pursue the matter. Or he’d flat-out lie and say four black guys jumped him up on Tenth and Ewing, and the police would just add another case to their list of random urban violence. But the kid would know what really happened and why, and that was the point.

“Here, walk it off a little,” Doug suggested as they reached the fountain. Jem was still bouncing around on his adrenaline rush. “You go back to the truck you’ll f-----g scare her.”

He had a point and they started to circle the stone fountain aimlessly. “Here, take my jacket,” Jem insisted, handing the wind breaker to his friend, whose shoulders were hunched against the cold.

“Thanks,” Doug told him. “I didn’t work up a sweat beatin’ the s—t outta anyone tonight, so…”

Jem laughed. “Hey, thanks for comin’ with me,” he added.

Doug shrugged; that was what friends did here. “So, you been seein’ the kid on the sly, huh?” he asked teasingly.

Jem’s smirk was somewhere between sheepish and roguish. “A couple of times, yeah,” he admitted. “Obviously she’s still parkin’ with d----ebags, though, so—“

“It’s Homecoming,” Doug dismissed, and Jem looked at him blankly. “You remember Homecoming? Football game, everyone gets dressed up and goes to a dance for five minutes, then they park somewhere to make out and drink?”

“Oh yeah, maybe I remember that,” Jem agreed. School-sponsored activities had not been of much interest to him. “I think I skipped getting dressed up and dancing.”

“Yeah, you probably did,” Doug laughed. “You good? Can we go back?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Jem decided and they headed back towards the truck.

“So we gonna take her home, or what?” Doug checked.

His phrasing was ambiguous. “ _Our_ home,” Jem clarified. Doug did not seem to think this was a good idea. “J---s, I can’t take her home all beat up, her parents’ll think _I_ did it,” Jem pointed out.

“Oh, so you want to keep her all night, _then_ take her home all beat up,” Doug surmised dryly. “That’s a much better plan.”

Jem rolled his eyes. “Well, we’ll see.” He opened the passenger side of the truck and Caitlin looked up worriedly from the seat. “Hey, sweetheart, you okay?” he asked, gently pushing her hair back from her face. Now he’d released his anger—mostly—and could think about what _she_ needed. “You cold? Come on, sit up, that’s right.” He slid onto the seat and wrapped his arm around her under the coat, threading his other hand through her hair to keep her close.

“Was he dead?” she asked fearfully. He needed to ask her what she thought she’d done to him—later, though. Doug climbed behind the wheel and started the engine, dropping Caitlin’s sparkly pink purse next to her on the seat.

“No, he’s not dead,” Jem assured her. “You got him good, though,” he claimed. “You hit him with the door or something?” She nodded and laid her head against his chest. “Well, don’t worry about him no more. Me and Doug put the fear of God in him.”

For the first time Caitlin seemed to remember Doug was there and she turned to him. “Thank you.”

The tearful praise made him uncomfortable. “No problem,” he insisted. When she turned away he gave Jem a prompting look.

“What time you gotta be home?” he asked her.

“Not until morning,” she replied, which was what he wanted to hear. “I was supposed to spend the night with a friend…”

“You _are_ ,” Jem told her firmly. “You’re gonna spend the night at our house. I’ll take you home in the morning.”

Caitlin offered no objection to this plan. “Okay.” She closed her eyes and started to relax a little in the warm cab, with Jem rubbing her back soothingly. “Jenna said I should go with him to Homecoming because he was a football player,” she muttered, the once-solid logic crumbling for her. “I don’t even _like_ football.”

“Jocks are all d----ebags,” Jem proclaimed.

“Hey!” Doug squawked, in mock indignation.

“Except hockey players,” Jem amended with a smirk. “Doug here was a big-time hockey player in high school.” Doug waved that off, not wanting to discuss his not-so-glory-days.

They pulled up to the house and Jem helped Caitlin out of the car. When he set her on her feet she hissed and picked up on foot, leaning against him for support. Fresh tears started to fill her eyes. “No, no, no,” he said, scooping her up. “You’re done crying. You’re not gonna cry anymore about that f----r. You’re gonna forget all about him.”

Doug held the door open for them. “I’ll get you some ice.”

“Stupid shoes,” Caitlin said angrily, referring to her pink high heels. “I started to run and I tripped, just like one of those stupid girls in a movie—“

“Hey. You’re not stupid,” Jem told her firmly. “But maybe next time take the shoes off first,” he conceded. He sat her down on the bed with her feet up, one bag of ice on her swelling ankle and one to cradle against her cheek.

“You want some disinfectant?” Doug asked. This was a household that knew how to take care of cuts and bruises.

Jem poked carefully at her split lip. “No, I think it’s healed over,” he decided. “Besides, it’d probably sting too much for her,” he added lightly. She tried to show she appreciated the comment without actually smiling and making the injury worse. “How about a drink?” he suggested instead. “You could do with a shot of bourbon in you.” She shook her head. “Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.” He slipped out of the bedroom and shut the door behind him. “Exciting f-----g night,” he cracked to Doug, quietly.

“Yeah, no s—t,” Doug agreed, but he didn’t seem to mind. “You’re gonna stay here with her, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Jem assured him. “I’ll make sure she falls asleep okay, you know. What are you gonna do?”

“I dunno, probably just watch some TV,” Doug shrugged. “Catch the end of the game. I’ll keep the volume down.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll probably be out in a minute, I’m just gonna put her to bed.” Doug looked like he didn’t quite believe that and Jem wasn’t sure he did, either.

He went back into the bedroom, finding Caitlin in exactly the same position he’d left her. She started to speak and he put a finger to his lips to shush her as he shut and locked the bedroom door. He waited until he heard Doug turn on the TV, then went to sit at the edge of the bed.

“I’m supposed to meet Jenna at her house,” Caitlin told him. “She has my clothes—“

“I’ll fix it,” Jem assured her. “I’ll fix your ankle, too, ‘cause that’s a real b---h if you can’t walk.” There was an expectant pause. “Well, how does it feel?” he prompted.

Caitlin flexed her foot experimentally. “It’s fine,” she reported in amazement. He looked askance at her lack of faith in him. “Well, I just thought healing it would be more dramatic, like with lights or something.”

“Lights, huh?” Jem repeated, rolling his eyes. “What else do you want, pixie dust?”

“Can you fix my face?” she wanted to know.

“Can _you_?”

Caitlin glared at him. “Well, how am I going to explain to my mom—“

“We’ll think of a story,” he promised. “Hey, Jenna got a basement? Maybe you tripped and fell down the stairs.”

“I think she _does_ have a basement,” Caitlin agreed. Then she sighed. “There’s going to be a lot of lies to keep straight, aren’t there?”

Jem shrugged. “Don’t think of them as lies. They’re, um—alternate realities,” he claimed. “Jenna can be made to remember you spending the night with her, falling down the stairs. Her parents could remember it. But,” he added thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’m gonna do that, because Doug knows you were here. I don’t like messin’ with the brains of people I know.”

Caitlin shook her head, overwhelmed. “I just—can’t believe it’s possible,” she admitted. “That _we_ can do stuff like that.”

“ _We_ can’t do s—t,” Jem corrected. “ _I_ can do stuff like that, while you’re lettin’ yourself almost get raped in the park.”

Caitlin’s eyes flashed. “ _Letting?_ ” she repeated angrily.

“Yeah, you could’ve blown his head off, blanked his mind the second you knew his intentions, prevented him from even _going_ to the park,” Jem listed. “I know you’re young, but I laid the whole f-----g thing out for you. Sure as f—k no one did that for _me_ , so you got no excuse for not flexin’ those muscles.”

Caitlin looked away from him for a moment. “I did do _something_ to him,” she decided.

“Yeah, what was that about?” Jem asked. “He was kinda holding his head when we found him. But he was up and walking around, until I f-----g laid him out.”

“I was really scared,” Caitlin remembered slowly, “and my hands—“ She looked down at them as if expecting them to be changed somehow. “I don’t know, they short of tingled, and he jerked backwards and hit his head on the doorframe. That’s when I ran for it.”

Jem took one of her hands and turned it over. “Crude, but effective,” he allowed.

“And, I called you!” Caitlin added more excitedly. “I didn’t have your number, but I just held the cell phone and I thought, ‘I really need to talk to Jem right now.’ And it dialed you!”

That, he smiled at. “Really? That’s pretty advanced,” he told her approvingly. He always had to temper his praise, though. “That’s desperation. Next you gotta learn to do it just ‘cause you want to.” She sighed, seeing this as a monumental task.

He stood and went to the chest of drawers, pulling out a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt. “You can wear these tonight,” he told her. “The pink toothbrush in the bathroom is yours. I’ll get your clothes from Jenna in the morning so you aren’t doing the walk of shame home in your dress.”

“Thanks.”

“Come on, get up,” he told her. “Stand up.”

Caitlin did so, though with a confused frown. She started to wince as she put her weight on one ankle, then remembered it didn’t hurt anymore. In irritation she kicked off her treacherous heels.

“Take your dress off.” She gave him an uncertain look, which under the circumstances he could understand. He moved closer. “Take your dress off.” He caught one of her arms, gently holding her in place while he reached for the zipper of the dress. “Come on, I’m not gonna hurt ya. I just wanna look at ya.” She took a deep breath, assessing him, then turned her back on him and slowly unzipped the rest of the dress, letting it fall from her shoulders and then her hips to the floor.

Jem was not disappointed by the view from the back. She was short without the heels, a head shorter than him or so, but with curves a fifties movie star would’ve killed for. She didn’t know what to do with them, at just sixteen; she didn’t want the attention she could get with them if she tried. But that was okay with him. He wanted to keep her all to himself anyway. Idly he trailed his fingers down her spine, from just below the clasp of her bra to the band of her panties, and she shivered.

“Turn around,” he told her softly, and she did, their eyes meeting for a long moment before he let his gaze drop. He liked the front view as well, but it was spoiled by the small, red scratches near one of her bra straps, where her pathetic excuse for a date had torn her dress in his impatience. Jem pressed his thumb there, at the top of her breast, and when he removed it the scratches were gone. Technically, he didn’t need to touch her to do that; but why waste the opportunity?

His eyes traveled down and he knelt before her, picking up the dress as she stepped out of it. His careful perusal spotted the bruises on her thighs, finger marks perhaps. Jem glanced up at her first, then leaned in slowly and brushed them with his lips, making her gasp. When he leaned back they had vanished.

Her eyes burned into his, desire and memory and fear and excitement all swirling together, and he knew if he didn’t stop now he wouldn’t be able to. And he wanted to do this _right_. Abruptly he broke the gaze and stood, tossing her dress over the bed.

“Go to sleep,” he told her. “You’re safe here.” Then he unlocked the door and slipped out, shutting it behind him.

**

Doug checked on them later that night, before he went to bed himself. Jem had stayed up watching TV for about an hour, concentrating not so much on the sports wrap-up but on his performance—eager to go to bed, to check on this girl he’d brought into their lives again, but not wanting to appear _too_ eager, because that wasn’t manly. It gave Doug something to smirk about into his beer, but not enough to comment on.

He left the bedroom door unlocked on purpose and at about three AM, shortly after the television was silenced, he heard the knob being tested. Doug and Jem had lived together long enough that they knew the rules: an unlocked door meant everything was PG-rated inside and no barrier to entry by the other. The door creaked slightly as it was opened, just a few inches, but Jem felt it wasn’t loud enough to wake a normal person, so he stayed in his sleeping position. Caitlin was truly out cold, still thinking she _needed_ to sleep. She was curled up in his arms, her back to him, with his nose buried in her hair—a sweet picture that would make Doug smile and wonder if his street-hardened friend was finally getting soft.

Maybe he was. Certainly by the standards they kept. But he wouldn’t lose his edge. Jem had a lot of adventures left in him, and now he had someone new to include in them.

**

Jem was at the bar after work, having a couple drinks with the usual crew before he decided on his evening activities—go home and play Xbox, offer to look after Shyne while Krista ran pills around town for the Florist, or maybe be a little more social and play some pool or go bowling.

The possibilities were just endless, he thought with a smirk. He liked it, though, the way it all seemed so simple and uncomplicated on the surface, but was really roiling with subtle social cues and expectations underneath. He kind of missed reading books (not a Jem Coughlin-type activity), but there were other lifetimes in which to read; in this one he was all about the people.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to see Caitlin’s picture on the screen. “Hey, sweetheart,” he answered, putting his back to the noisy bar.

“Hi,” she replied, sounding slightly excited and nervous at the same time. He liked that combination. “So, I got all my homework done in study hall and my mom’s working late and my brother is over at a friend’s house,” she told him in a rush, “and I thought maybe we could hang out. For a while.”

Jem grinned. Usually he only got to see her on weekends, or at least that had been the case so far. He didn’t think she was really asking her mom for permission to see him, so much as just claiming she was out with friends in general. “Yeah, you wanna come down to the bar?” he suggested impulsively. “Come down and meet the guys.” Doug, who had rolled his eyes when he realized it was Caitlin, now choked slightly on his soda.

“Sure, okay,” she agreed, with only a brief hesitation. “Which bar is it?”

“Kelly’s,” he directed. “It’s on First and Duncan. You think you can find it?” He almost offered to come pick her up, but then decided this would be a good test of her navigational abilities.

“I think so,” Caitlin decided, accepting the challenge.

“Okay.” He hung up and turned back to the bar to find Doug shaking his head. “What?” he protested, with mock indignation.

“Man, they’re not even gonna let her in here,” Doug predicted. He still clearly did not know what to make of Jem’s new relationship.

“Is this Jem’s mystery girl?” Des asked eagerly. “Why wouldn’t Moe let her in? Is she black or something?”

“No, dips—t,” Jem laughed. “She ain’t black. But if she _was_ , I wouldn’t want to hear any s—t about it from any of you,” he warned. “It’s the twenty-first f-----g century, you know.”

Des nodded earnestly. “But she’s not, right?” he checked. “I wouldn’t know how to act around her.”

“You don’t know how to act around girls anyway,” teased Doug good-naturedly. Des was, at twenty-two, the youngest member of their regular crew and someone Doug always thought of as the baby, who was maybe a little too young and inexperienced to be involved in what they did, even if he mainly just handled the electronics. Apparently he now had to get used to hanging around with someone even younger—though hopefully Jem wouldn’t start bringing Caitlin on heists. Doug thought he could put his foot down on that one.

Jem was just starting to get antsy about where Caitlin was when Doug suddenly choked on his drink again and muttered, “Oh, s—t!” Jem looked out the window where he was looking, then jumped off the barstool and sped out the door with Doug on his heels.

They caught Caitlin in front of the bar and dragged her around to the alley, glancing around to make sure no one had seen them. “What the f—k are you doing?!” Jem demanded, not so much angry as panicked. Doug covered his hand with his mouth to hide the grin.

Caitlin looked confused, and slightly hurt. “You said I could meet you at the bar,” she reminded him.

“Not in a—not in a f-----g _schoolgirl uniform_ ,” Jem sputtered. He was not overacting much; obviously he had assumed too much common sense for her. There was a point at which ‘roguish’ turned into ‘child molester’ and though technically she was past it, they didn’t need to make people _wonder_.

“Well, I _am_ a schoolgirl,” she pointed out, with a touch of stubbornness. “I came straight from school. To see _you_.”

“What the f—k are you laughing at?” Jem snapped at Doug, which did not deter him. “Well, gimme your keys, I’m gonna drive her home.” Why were they always in Doug’s truck when he needed to travel?

But Caitlin had that look in her eye, the look that said she knew now she wasn’t an ordinary, nice girl and didn’t always have to do as ordinary, nice girls would. “No. You said I could hang out at the bar and meet people.” Jem was torn between wishing he hadn’t taught her so well, and being pleased that she’d learned. Since Doug was there he leaned towards the former.

“Well you’re not in _that_ outfit,” he insisted.

“I thought guys _liked_ naughty schoolgirls,” Caitlin suggested, with less self-awareness than such a statement really warranted, and Doug stifled a chortle at Jem’s expression.

“Not when they’re _actually_ schoolgirls,” he claimed, glaring at Doug.

“Who are _actually_ naughty,” Doug managed to choke out. He was enjoying his friend’s predicament and Jem felt this was probably going to come up again and again for a long time. He tried to be philosophical about it and appreciate how much entertainment it was going to bring Doug in the long run. And everyone else he told it to.

For now, though, he let his frustration out in a growl. “Do you have anything else to wear?” he demanded.

Caitlin indicated her backpack. “Well, I have my gym clothes—“

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Jem responded with considerable sarcasm.

“Oh, come on, you walk around in your track suits all the time,” Doug pointed out. Granted, they were designer—some kind of screwed-up status symbol, like you were saying you were so important you didn’t need to bother wearing real clothes.

“Do you jog?” Caitlin asked with a frown, clearly unable to picture it, and Doug had to turn away for a second.

If he weren’t here, this would be much simpler—Jem could fix her up with appropriate clothes instantly. But maybe this would be another good challenge for her—she should be able to do the same thing for herself. “Okay, fine,” Jem finally said, his tone clearly indicating this was a test. “You try and make yourself a decent outfit. If I like it you can sit with me and Doug. If I don’t you get kicked out on your a-s and I pretend I don’t know you.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Caitlin observed.

“Well, I’d take you for ice cream later,” Jem caved, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it. He could look a _little_ p---y-whipped in front of Doug. No magic, though.

This seemed to please Caitlin, at least, after his initial cold reception. “Okay,” she beamed. “I’ll give it a try.” She was eager to practice her abilities with a specific goal in mind.

Jem found himself grinning back at her for a few seconds longer than he really should. “Okay, fine,” he agreed abruptly. “Here’s the back door.” He guided her past some old garbage bags and crates to a rusting metal door and yanked it open. The smell inside the dim hallway was not much better than the one outside it. “There’s the ladies’ room. Go change. Try not to be totally f-----g juvenile.” The irony of that command was not lost on anyone present.

Jem shut the door after her, then he and Doug started to head back around front. After a moment he glanced at his friend, who couldn’t help it anymore and let out a burst of laughter. “Shut up,” Jem ordered, shoving him sideways, but it was an affectionate sort of shove, and he was smirking slightly himself.

“Just—man—the plaid f-----g skirt—“ Doug chuckled, relishing it a moment longer. “And the sweater!”

“She better f-----g lose _both_ of those,” Jem muttered darkly.

They went back inside the bar, their friends not sure whether to question their sudden exit or not. Sometimes, it was just better not to ask, and to trust that your pal would tell you something if he wanted you to know. “Move,” Jem ordered the man who had been sitting next to him, and he wisely picked up his beer and fled. Jem took his seat, leaving the empty chair between him and Doug for Caitlin.

It was almost taken by his sister. “Someone’s sitting there,” Jem warned Krista when she appeared.

She rolled her eyes and wedged herself in anyway, temporarily at least, as she ordered her drink. “You got a f-----g imaginary friend now or what?”

“Where’s Shyne?” Jem wanted to know, before she could get involved with flirting with Doug.

Krista turned back to him impatiently. “Tammy’s watchin’ her. J---s! Gimme a little f-----g credit here.”

Jem could see from the unnatural glow in her eyes that she was taking some kind of drugs, already, in the late afternoon, when she’d done nothing all day but watch soap operas and get her nails done, and her work would soon be starting in earnest—delivering pills for the Florist tended to be an after-dark activity, as were the other things she occasionally did to earn a little extra. There was no point in saying anything to her about it, though. That was her life now, and she wouldn’t change unless forced to by circumstance. Besides, he wasn’t exactly the stand-up guy in her circle of friends and family—that was Doug. Jem was just the guy who would always come to pick her up in the middle of the night, who would beat down someone she pointed out without asking too many questions, and who wouldn’t demand anything in return for it. Just _that_ guy, hardly worth listening to on other matters.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he heard Doug say in a tone of affected astonishment, “say that again. Tell it to Jem. Hey, Jem, listen up to this.” His brow was furrowed and he nodded seriously, so Jem knew he was about to be messed with.

Krista was happy to keep being the center of attention, even if she didn’t fully get the joke. “I was just sayin’, I was just in the ladies’ room with some of the girls, when in walks, truly, a f-----g schoolgirl, little plaid skirt, bookbag, the whole thing!”

Jem’s expression tightened, as it must. “Really,” he managed to mutter.

“Yeah, how ‘bout that?” Doug asked, as though he were fascinated by this occurrence. “What, uh, what d’you think of that?” he asked Krista innocently. “You think she’s just, like, _lost_ , or—“

“Well _I_ figured maybe the johns at the Prancing Pony were all clogged up again”—that was the strip club down the street—“so she was comin’ down here to use ours.” It was jarring to hear something that actually made sense leave Krista’s mouth. It certainly made more sense than reality. “But she must be new, ‘cause when she saw us doin’ lines I thought her eyes was gonna pop out of her head,” she continued blithely. “I mean, how is _that_ comfortable? So I told her, like, you better mind your own f-----g business, or you’re gonna be strippin’ with a bloody nose.”

“Not very attractive,” Doug deadpanned.

Jem wheeled on his sister, though, temper flaring. It had been simmering since he’d seen Caitlin’s original outfit. “What is that?” he demanded, startling her with his sudden intensity. “Is that supposed to show how tough you are, punching some kid in the face who don’t know any better? That is f-----g pathetic.”

Doug looked slightly alarmed by the turn this had taken; Krista, with a similar temperament to her brother, was incensed. “I did not actually f-----g punch her,” she corrected hotly. “And anyway, why do you give a f—k if I _did_? J---s! What’s got you by the b—ls?” The aptness of the metaphor was not lost on Doug, who valiantly covered his smirk even as he watched his friend’s reaction.

Krista did not actually really care that much about what was bothering her brother, however, feeling only the sting of his insult, and she flounced away with her drink—which would go on _his_ tab—to find her friends. She hadn’t intended to hang around with Jem and Doug for much longer, anyway.

“You seem a little tense,” Doug deadpanned across the once-again empty seat.

Jem gave him the finger and was about to add a colorful insult when he sensed something in the other direction, like someone had whispered his name and it had somehow carried through the raucous crowd. He turned and saw Caitlin peeking around the corner, signaling to him. He turned back for one last sip of beer and gave Doug a slightly doomed look.

“It’ll be fine,” Doug insisted. Then he pulled out his keys and handed them to Jem. “In case you need to make a quick getaway,” he added. The gesture was thoughtful, but also pointed out how ridiculous Jem was being, from about the only person who could do that safely. Jem smirked a little in acknowledgment, the old part that used to be all of him taking the gesture to heart. The newer, real part wished, futilely, that Doug could have gotten out of Charlestown, been the good guy he was somewhere it would be appreciated more.

But that wasn’t the part he had to play.

Jem tried to walk casually to the back of the bar, like he was just going to the men’s room. The hallway was empty at the moment, except for Caitlin.

“Holy s—t,” Jem commented, his eyes not making it higher than her collar before bouncing back down.

“It turned out to be really easy,” she burbled excitedly. “See, it’s just my school shoes but no socks, and my school blouse but I kind of tied it up. _Then_ , I got out my gym shorts and, you know, _with magic_ ”—she whispered the phrase—“made them more stylish.” Meaning, shorter and tighter. She turned in a circle for him, so he didn’t even have to imagine what they looked like from behind.

It was only when she stopped talking that he met her gaze, seeing the uncertainty in her expression as she awaited his judgment. “I think maybe we should go,” Jem told her.

Her face fell. “Oh. But didn’t I do it right?” she asked with disappointment. “Do they look weird in back? There were these—other people in there and it was kind of like what they were wearing.” She started to unknot the tails of her shirt. “I could tie this up higher—“

He put his hand on hers at her waist, his thumb brushing against her bare skin, and pushed her back a few inches to the wall. “We should go,” he repeated in a low voice, bracing one arm on the wall beside her, “because I really want to f—k you right now, and you don’t wanna do that here.”

Caitlin grinned, slowly, knowingly, and there was a flash in her eyes of something more than just a teenage girl. She bit her lower lip, then licked it, in that way that drove him crazy, that always drove him crazy, and he leaned down to kiss her.

She stopped him with a firm hand on his chest. “You _said_ I could meet people,” she reminded him, more confident now.

“You don’t wanna meet these people, they’re f-----g losers,” he muttered, pressing against her again.

“They’re your friends.”

“Circumstances,” he claimed. “Let’s go back to my place. Or a hotel. You wanna go to a hotel? Can you stay the night?” C----t, now he was babbling, and she laughed at him, as she should. He backed off slightly, trying to clear his head. “Okay, fine,” he conceded, ungraciously. “But I hope you know how to throw a punch. If you get into a girl-fight I can’t really help you out.”

Caitlin frowned in confusion. “Why would I get into a fight?”

Jem took off his jacket and wrapped it around her bookbag, which rested on the floor. “Around here you never know,” he told her. “Okay, you wait ‘til I’m back at the bar, then join me. Don’t walk shy.” He left with her semi-concealed bookbag before she could ask what he meant.

If you didn’t look too closely it was kind of like he was just carrying his jacket back to his seat, and he shoved both the jacket and the bookbag—naturally, it was lavender—beneath the empty chair where Caitlin was going to sit. “You were gone long enough, I thought you were taking her home,” Doug teased.

“Yeah, well, it’s not gonna last too long,” Jem predicted darkly. He faced the bar, drinking his beer a little too quickly and pretending he was interested in the game, until he felt a slight change in the atmosphere of the room. Then he turned the way other people were turning—not everyone, she wasn’t a supermodel in a bikini strutting in with her own theme music—although he had no complaints on that score, not with the way the shorts and the shirt hugged her curves. She didn’t show off. But she didn’t walk shy, either.

And she came right up to him. He was almost surprised by it.

“Hey, baby,” she greeted, giving him a quick kiss. They had not discussed the proper manly endearments to use in public, but he didn’t think anyone was paying much attention to that right now.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He relaxed slightly as she took the chair he indicated, his arm resting along the back of it and their legs brushing. He didn’t know what he’d been worried about—she was a beautiful girl and he liked having her near, and f—k what anyone else thought. They might as well be alone in the room for all he cared. “Hey, Moe, bring her a—“ He turned to face the unamused, beefy bartender.

“She better only be askin’ for tonic,” he warned stonily. Okay, a small change of wardrobe wasn’t going to make her look twenty-one.

“Tonic?” Caitlin repeated blankly.

“Yeah, pop, soda, Coca-Cola,” Jem translated. “Don’t they speak English in California?”

“Um, a Diet Coke?” she asked Moe, who gave Jem a final shake of the head before placing the drink in front of her and swiftly moving away. She turned slightly to Doug. “So, how was work today?” she asked conversationally.

“Uh, work was good,” Doug claimed. “Broke a lot of rocks today. Sometimes, when the drill ain’t workin’, we use Jem’s head to break them. Right, buddy?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” Jem agreed quickly, looking up from Caitlin’s third button. She wasn’t actually showing any cleavage, unless you tilted your head a certain way and looked straight down—Caitlin and Doug smirked and she rolled her eyes.

“How was school?” Doug asked her. “Did you have that math test yet?”

“Oh, G-d, don’t talk about _that_ ,” Jem hissed at them, as though this should be obvious. “Here, turn around.” He pointed to two men who were waiting at the table nearby. “That’s Des, and that’s Gloansy. They’re my crew.” A certain pride crept into his tone, which was hardly forced at all.

“Hello,” Caitlin told them politely. “Do you guys work at Sand and Gravel, too?”

“H—l no, do I look like I’m breakin’ rocks all day?” Gloansy laughed, patting his ample belly. “I’m a cab driver.”

She nodded with interest and turned to Des, who was still goggling at her legs as if he’d never seen such things before. “Hey, f----r,” Jem prompted irritably, snapping his fingers in the young man’s eyeline. His head jerked up, face beet red, and naturally the others laughed at him. “This genius here works at Vericom,” Jem replied on his behalf. “So when your phone goes out, now you know why.”

“That must be very interesting work,” Caitlin encouraged him.

“Not really,” he mumbled, diving into his beer.

“Oh, and that’s my sister, Krista,” Jem admitted, nodding towards the pool table where the woman and her friends were watching them and whispering. “Somehow, you’ve failed to meet her before,” he added dryly. The omission had of course been deliberate.

“Oh, Shyne’s mother,” Caitlin connected. The toddler, she had met, when Jem had been babysitting one weekend. “That’s so nice that she named her after you, you guys must be really close.”

Jem stared at her, trying to pick up on some convoluted logic or sarcasm in her statement. “What are you talkin’ about?” he was finally forced to ask.

“Oh, well, ‘shine’ like gems are shiny, you know, like gemstones,” Caitlin tried to explain, clearly feeling increasingly stupid.

Jem blinked at her, then turned to regard Krista again. “I never thought of that before,” he admitted, considering it. He’d always thought that it was some kind of lower class status symbol name, which Krista had resorted to because there were already kids in the neighborhood named Lexus and Chanel. “You ever thought of that?” he asked Doug, intrigued.

“Yeah,” Doug assured him.

“Huh.” Suddenly Krista seemed marginally more likable to him. He was quite a bit older than her and had been in prison for many of her formative adolescent years; when he emerged she was already a cocky, brash teenage dropout who rejected supervision but embraced the money he provided. He’d never felt much of a connection to her, despite their blood relative status. But maybe she had some positive feeling for him after all.

**

Sometimes Agent Frawley went over to the board containing the photos and evidence for the bank robbery case and just stared at it, eyes flicking between mugshots and surveillance photos, newspaper articles and forged timesheets, forensics reports and witness statements. Somewhere in there was something he could grasp, that would wedge this case wide open—a pattern, a connection, a weak link. These guys were not brainiacs, after all. Elden was clever with the electronics; Magloan was clever with the driving; MacRay was the cleverest, a careful researcher and planner, but this was certainly no _Mission: Impossible_ force. And Coughlin was just a Pitbull, a spanner in the works who could jam things up at any time—which would be great for Frawley, actually, but he didn’t think he’d get _that_ lucky.

Dino joined him after a moment, sipping lousy coffee from a paper cup. He’d drunk so much of it lately he actually seemed to like it. “See anything new?” he inquired after a moment.

“Two questions,” Frawley replied, surprising himself slightly. He didn’t want to overanalyze, wanted to try and go with his instincts here. “The bank manager, Claire Keesey—is she involved somehow?”

Dino shrugged a little, clearly not finding that lead juicy. “She seemed pretty shaken up after,” he noted, keeping his tone mostly neutral.

Frawley was not convinced this let her off the hook. “I’m not saying she’s part of the townie crew,” he qualified. “But if she gave them information about the vault, promised she’d open it for them… Maybe she didn’t realize what it would actually be like, maybe they promised no one would get hurt, that kind of bulls—t. And she fell for it and helped them out.”

Dino made a discouraging noise. “It’s not because she lives in Charlestown, is it?” he checked. “She only moved there a couple of years ago, she’s from Pittsburgh.” Frawley avoided rolling his eyes; Dino was a native of the Town and seemed to share the attitude that you weren’t a real citizen unless you’d been not just born but _conceived_ there.

“No, that’s not it,” Frawley denied. “Although, that’d be pretty weird, right? For these guys. Knowing she lived so close, that they could be passing on the street, using the same laundromat. Might make them kind of nervous, if they really did just pick her randomly.”

Dino saw where he was going with this but shook his head. “If we can’t get twenty-four-hour surveillance on the suspects, we sure as h—l won’t get it on a witness,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Frawley sighed. “Maybe I’ll drop by and see her sometime, try and figure out if anyone’s been intimidating her.”

“Sounds intimidating,” Dino deadpanned. “What’s the second question?”

Frawley had not forgotten. “Who’s Coughlin’s girlfriend?” He tapped a series of surveillance photos he’d taken himself, of some lively get-togethers in Coughlin and MacRay’s backyard—the whole crew was there, plus Coughlin’s sister who muled for the Florist, and various other local characters often of ill repute. And then there was this girl.

This, Dino applied himself to, partly because he didn’t mind looking at her but also because she stood out, didn’t fit the way everyone else fit. “She doesn’t look like a townie,” he observed. “Too classy.”

Frawley was glad _he’d_ been the one to say it. “Look at her clothes. Compare her to Coughlin’s sister,” he pointed out. “I mean, she’s not a nun, but she’s… modest. You’d let your teenage daughter go out dressed like that and not worry.”

“And hardly any make-up,” Dino added, “or jewelry.” He was not in the habit of critiquing women’s cosmetics or accessories, but a certain kind of townie woman plastered herself with both, and this one had neither. “Maybe she’s just some kind of younger sister or cousin of someone, staying with them, doesn’t know anyone else?”

The next picture Frawley flipped to showed the young woman sitting on Coughlin’s lap, her arm around his neck and his hand groping her a-s. And no one else in the photo seemed provoked by it. “She’s definitely _his_ girlfriend,” Frawley said dryly, though he failed to see the appeal to her. “Or frequent hook-up, anyway.”

“Doesn’t exactly look like a career criminal,” Dino just had to point out.

“No,” Frawley agreed. “But if she’s in deep with _them_ , there might be _something_ we can use as leverage. She could be the weak link.”

“Well, I’ll have her picture sent around,” Dino shrugged. “People ought to remember meeting _her_.”

**

Bank robbery could be a difficult crime to investigate, in terms of people’s attitudes towards it. On the one hand, it tended to evoke a certain amount of horror—it was so bold, so ambitious in some people’s minds, evoking Old West gunslingers and Prohibition-era gangsters. That was good for getting resources, for making people want to help you out. On the other hand, some people _idolized_ Old West gunslingers and Prohibition-era gangsters, and found the boldness appealing. Others pragmatically pointed out that the money stolen was usually insured and that as long as no one was killed, it just didn’t rank as a violent crime the way murder, assault, and arson did.

Of course, most of the people saying that had never actually _been_ through a bank robbery, or even investigated one. They weren’t committed by angels with dirty faces who went out of their way to avoid even scaring anyone. There was assault committed, shots fired, property damaged. There were high-speed chases through narrow streets that could easily result in deaths. And there was even sometimes arson—witness the fireball in the middle of Charlestown, when this particular crew had torched their getaway car to destroy evidence. Bank robberies, at least the ones Frawley was used to working, were committed by hardened, violent criminals with just enough savvy to realize that if they didn’t _actually_ shoot anyone, the pragmatists would divert resources to terror suspects at every opportunity. Leaving _him_ stuck with overworked, underpaid, rookie investigators and little to no support.

So that was Frawley’s mood today, after he knew— _knew_ —that this crew had pulled another job, more successfully than they had any right to, with even the shot guard still clinging to life such that Frawley couldn’t pin a murder rap on them. Yet. He had to add the ‘yet’ part just to keep himself sane, though he had no evidence it would actually be met.

Then Dino burst into the room with a big grin on his face. “Frawl, I got something,” he announced, striding over with a folder in his hand.

Frawley tried not to get too excited. “What?”

“Coughlin’s girlfriend.”

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a fingerprint from the switch car matching one of their suspects, but at least it was forward motion. “You’ve got a name?”

“Caitlin Anderson,” Dino revealed. He held up the folder but did not hand it over, suggesting there was an additional juicy detail he wanted to spill himself.

“Has she got a record? An outstanding warrant?” Frawley guessed. That would be nice leverage.

“No,” Dino admitted. “I was showing her photo around the schools, on the off chance she’d been a local once and moved away. And I got a hit.”

Frawley frowned. “She went to high school in the Town?” he surmised. “I thought you had expertly deduced she couldn’t be from around here.”

Dino’s smirk widened. “Not _went_ ,” he corrected. “ _Goes_.” Finally he flipped open the folder, displaying the best surveillance photo beside a color copy of a student ID picture.

“Holy s—t,” Frawley intoned, leaning heavily back against the desk. His mind churned with the possibilities. “Please tell me she’s—“

“She’s sixteen,” Dino warned, so they couldn’t get Coughlin for statutory rape. “But—she’s _sixteen_ ,” he emphasized. A minor in many other ways, even if the great state of Massachusetts had seen fit to allow her to have sex with men over twice her age. “She’s a sophomore at Central High. Honor roll, by the way. Moved in from California last summer. Her stepfather works at the steel plant.”

“Never even had a detention,” Frawley noted, looking at the school records. “Really, what the f—k is she doing with him?” His tone was part disdain, part delight—a kid who was treading down the wrong path, tiptoeing really, should be easy to scare straight, and it was highly likely she had seen or heard _something_ that could be useful to them. At the very least, his investigation of her would make Coughlin mad; and he was the most likely to do something stupid when he got mad.

Frawley snapped the folder shut and grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go back to school, Dino,” he decided cheerfully.


End file.
